Most major hotel chains, property brokers, timeshare companies and aggregators offer a proprietary rewards mobile application (referred to herein as a mobile app) to their members, including loyalty programs promoted by Wyndham Rewards™, Marriott™, Choice™ Hotels, Hotels.com, the Ritz-Carlton™, Hilton Honors™, Hotels.com™, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG™), Hyatt™, and Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG™). However, adoption has been sluggish because downloading and configuring the app is perceived to be cumbersome and time consuming. User engagement is further limited due to consumer resistance to location services arising out of privacy concerns. Succinctly, current value propositions are insufficient to persuade consumers to enable location services running on loyalty program mobile apps.
GPS and other tracking/location services capable of being implemented on laptop computers, tablets, smart phones, headsets, and wearable devices and accessories have achieved wide acceptance, particularly when used to provide driving directions and other travel related navigation assistance. However, the aggregate location data is difficult to effectively harness for marketing purposes because it typically lacks context; that is, simply knowing where a person is or has been is of limited value unless the system also has a sense of why that person is there.
Systems and methods are thus needed which overcome these limitations.